A pill containing two anti-viral drugs appears to cure currently untreatable hepatitis C, offering hope to patients at risk of serious liver damage and early death.
Although more work needs to be done to ensure the treatment is safe and effective, experts believe the early results could mark a turning point in tackling an intractable deadly disease.
In an early trial, the virus was eliminated from virtually every patient who took part, including those who had previously not responded to existing drugs.
Hepatitis C is a virus spread via blood and bodily fluids that damages the liver and often takes many years to produce symptoms. There is no vaccine that can prevent the infection, as there is for other forms of hepatitis.
Available treatments for hepatitis C consist of cocktails of powerful interferon and protease inhibitor drugs that have serious side-effects and involve complex regimes of pills and injections.
But in a significant number of cases involving the common genotype 1 strain of the virus, the drugs will not work. Patients whose infections cannot be cured may suffer potentially fatal cirrhosis damage to their livers or develop liver cancer.
The new treatment consists of a single pill containing the experimental drugs sofosbuvir and ledipasvir.
For the trial, 100 patients with genotype 1 hepatitis C were split into different groups and given the combination pill for either eight or 12 weeks.
One group of 40 had previously failed to respond to existing drugs, and just over half of them had cirrhotic livers.
Three months after completing the course of treatment, 97% of the patients had achieved a sustained virological response, essentially a functional cure that means the virus is eliminated and prevented from replicating.
Source: John von Radowitz, Irish Examiner, 06/11/13
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